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Members of the Pregnancy Loss Research Group present at COMET Conference on communication, medicine and ethics
Members of the Pregnancy Loss Research Group participated in the COMET Conference, held at University College Cork from 20-22 June.
Professor Keelin O’Donoghue chaired a panel session on the role of and challenges for healthcare professionals in provision of Termination of Pregnancy services in Ireland since 2019, speaking alongside Dr Deirdre Hayes-Ryan and collaborators from the School of Law – Professor Mary Donnelly and Dr Claire Murray.
Dr Hayes-Ryan presented research on the introduction of services in Ireland, training needs and challenges. Dr Murray and Professor Donnelly provided an overview of their study of conscientious provision of abortion care and clinician experiences of early medical abortion, which was funded by the Irish Research Council, in partnership with the Irish Family Planning Association. Professor O’Donoghue concluded the session with a presentation on fetal medicine specialist experiences of providing a new service of termination of pregnancy for fatal fetal anomaly.
Earlier in the conference, Marita Hennessy PhD gave a talk on “Ensuring bereaved parents are seen and heard: Using graphic medicine to affect change in perinatal death review processes”. She provided an insight into the collaborative production of the recently published graphic narrative, Why My Baby Died, with illustrator Amy Lauren, and the research which underpinned it. Marita also presented a poster from the Irish Research Council-funded PLATFORM project: “Addressing the silence: Engaging knowledge users to develop a knowledge translation strategy for pregnancy loss research”.
Marita Hennessy PhD presenting at COMET 2023
COMET is an international and interdisciplinary conference on communication, medicine and ethics. It brings together scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds, involving various healthcare specialities and the human and social sciences. There is special emphasis on the dissemination of ongoing research in language / discourse / communication studies in relation to healthcare education, patient participation and professional ethics.
Many thanks to Professor Nicole Müller, Head of Speech and Hearing Sciences in the School of Clinical Therapies at UCC, and all involved on the local organising committee for their work in hosting COMET 2023.